MOSCOW, February 22 (RIA Novosti) - A cash courier and a driver were robbed of over 43 million rubles ($1.2 million) in an attack by armed robbers in the Tula Region in central Russia, local police said on Sunday.

The attack occurred on Saturday in the Volovsky district of the Tula Region when seven unidentified persons, two of them wearing the uniform of traffic police, blocked with two vehicles a Toyota car of the First Processing Bank, the police said.

"Threatening the driver and the bank's cashier with automatic rifles, the assailants cuffed them and took away bags with money," the police said.

The sum taken away by the robbers is tentative. Measures are under way to find the attackers, the police said.

As the global financial crisis is unfolding, attacks on cash couriers have become more frequent in Russia, including in Moscow.

On December 30, one cash courier was killed and another injured by armed robbers in the south of Moscow, with the robbers taking from 2 million to 5 million rubles from the couriers ($68,000-170,000).

On December 19, a security guard turned on his colleague after collecting cash from a supermarket in the southeast of Moscow. The guard pointed a gun at his partner and made off with some 6 million rubles ($213,000) and the delivery vehicle. The delivery van was discovered the next day in the outskirts of Moscow with some of the money still inside.